Francophiles based in the Stuttgart, Germany, area may still be rejoicing over the May launch of a high-speed train between their fair city and Paris. The French TGV, or train à grande vitesse, now coursing the route has knocked about two hours and twenty minutes off the time previously needed to complete the journey, bringing it down to just three hours and 39 minutes, to be precise.

To somewhat lesser fanfare, the time needed to traverse the route between Frankfurt and Paris on a German Inter-City Express was knocked down by a couple hours as well. Where do you need to live to benefit from the new routes?

The train departing Frankfurt stops in Mannheim and Kaiserslautern; from the latter, the journey time into Paris is a schnell-ish two hours and 38 minutes. The Stuttgart train stops in Karlsruhe and Kehl.

Another tip for booking seats on the fast train -- plan your journey in good time. As of this writing, seats on the fastest Frankfurt to Paris non-stop route on weekend dates were unavailable, even at full price, for trips booked three weeks in advance and beyond. Those interested in train travel in Europe and its future direction will find the article from the July 7-13 edition of The Economist titled “A high-speed revolution” heartening.  

So you’ve made it into Paris at record speed -- what to do now? Well, from July 15, you can pedal your way about the city on a bike for a fairly nice price. The Velib’ system will give you access to one of 10,000 bicycles from approximately 750 access points. To use Velib’, you’ll need to buy a “subscription” of sorts. A one-day subscription costs 1 euro for a half-hour’s worth of use of the bike, with each additional half-hour incurring an additional 1-euro charge. A week’s worth of the services costs from 5 euros, again based on 30-minute daily usage. You will need a credit card to plug into the system, and 150 euros will be held back as a deposit until you have returned the bike to another access point and locked it up, safe and sound. While the Velib’ Web site is only in French, you can glean some good information from an article which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on July 6, “French revolution: Rentable bikes every 900 feet.”